Open AccessTranslating planting and payoff in Edgar Wright’s Cornetto trilogy
Author(s) -
Taniya Gupta
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
meta
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.257
H-Index - 27
eISSN - 1492-1421
pISSN - 0026-0452
DOI - 10.7202/1077410ar
Subject(s) - trilogy , wright , narrative , order (exchange) , shot (pellet) , plot (graphics) , hindsight bias , journalism , media studies , sociology , art , history , literature , psychology , art history , social psychology , chemistry , statistics , mathematics , organic chemistry , finance , economics
“Planting and payoff” is a narrative technique in cinema where future plot eventsare foreshadowed by means of a verbal or visual hint that later acquires greatersignificance in hindsight. This article examines the use of this technique in Britishdirector Edgar Wright’s Cornetto trilogy ( Shaun of the Dead , HotFuzz and The World’s End ) in order to discover if these plants and payoffs areaccessible to a Spanish speaking audience in the subtitled and dubbed DVD versions. EdgarWright is known for his extensive use of verbal-visual foreshadowing and there are multipleInternet forums, film websites and vlogs by film students and fans that discuss the secretswaiting to be found by observant viewers. Using Chaume’s (2004a, 2012) list of signifyingcodes, this article attempts to isolate relevant frames of certain shots and, by breakingdown the verbal and nonverbal information coded in each shot, it examines whether thisforeshadowing is communicated in the subtitled and dubbed versions of these films. In doingso, it explores how information is shared between the different components of film languageand the importance of taking into consideration the role of nonverbal codes in audiovisualtranslation.